"We did everything that we could do to finish strong,” said Coach Gasso recently on Total Sports on KREF Radio. “We won 28 out of our last 29 games, and we have done everything right, and at this point we could not have asked anything more from this team.

“This is a tough deal. I want to preface I am not taking anything away from anyone, and I don’t have sour grapes. We are ready to play, and we are going to be ready to play no matter what you throw at us, but I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions as to why an Ole Miss that was 23 RPI wise going into this weekend, and they won the SEC Tournament, and they did a great job with it. However, in the RPI they went from 23 to 12, which was shocking. We have spent the last six weeks trying to move from 16 to eight, and we went on a great winning streak.”

Oklahoma has been in the NCAA Tournament for the 23 years that Coach Gasso has been at the helm of the Sooners, and last season became the third program ever to win more than two national titles. However, that didn’t seem to mean much to the NCAA Committee.

“A lot has to do with the teams that we are playing, but we can’t control our conference or the strength of who we are playing,” said Gasso. “I have felt this many times before, but especially since we are the 2016 National Champions, and I know that happened last year, but I feel a little disrespected. I feel our program is a little disrespected. Especially the pairing in the Super Regional (Auburn), which is ridiculous. Whatever it is, then it is, but I feel for teams like Minnesota (54-3, unseeded), which was a travesty.

“So there are teams like Minnesota, OU, Baylor, Lafayette, Michigan where maybe your conference RPI is not major strong. You go out and you play a tough schedule early, and it is almost like you can’t win for losing. Let's say we go out in February and mid March and we play 12 teams that are ranked in the top 25, and it is almost like if you don’t win those games, or 80 percent of them you are going to get hammered, and you are not going to get shown any mercy at all even if you go on a great winning streak.

“It doesn’t matter what your score was; it is just the fact that if you lost then you lost. I don't know if they (committee) are taking into account that you are playing in February, which is the first weekend of your season. We are such a different team right now, but those early games still get held against you, and when you are in some of these other power conferences you can win one-out-of-three in a series and still move your way up. So we are kind of stuck in this tough place to live right now, and it worked against James Madison and Minnesota, and teams like that who have a bigger gripe than I do."

Considering the outcome of the seedings this past Sunday, Coach Gasso would like to know what goes into the committee’s seeding decisions.

“I want to find out what goes on in that room,” said Gasso. “I want it to be transparent and I want it to be videotaped. I want to know what they are taking into consideration. I am not even looking past this weekend because our regional is tough in itself. Tulsa, Arkansas and North Dakota State is a very tough regional, but to put two teams that just have played each other in one of the best National Championship finals (OU and Auburn) in a super regional is more of a ratings gimmick than to what makes sense.

“To me, it is disrespectful to the hard work that we are putting in to do something like that. Now, I could be totally wrong and maybe they didn’t even consider that, but they should, but I don’t know. I do know that we are going to come out and fight with a little bit of aggression behind it. We do feel our program was somewhat disrespected because we are not in the SEC. So we go on and are determined to play well.”

Pretty much. She is so annoying. She has literally nothing to b*tch about right now. She acts like she's the first team/program to feel the consequences of lower RPI. And pointing out that they are the defending NCs? Patty needs to find a theater and have several seats. I feel like this is 2015 all over again with her crap.

I get she is upset about her seeding, but in my opinion she got the best draw possible. I know she'd rather be at home, but at best they were going to be the 8 seed and either play Tennessee or Texas A&M, who can both hit way better than AU. I am an Auburn fan and unless we win 1-0, I don't see us beating Parker. Cooper is still in a funk and Wallace has struggled since her injury. Our best bet is Veach or Fagan squaring one up and Carlson shutting them out. With the inconsistency from AU, I don't even know that winning the regional is a guarantee.

They already ignore conference Top 25/50/75 wins for bonuses/penalties. Are they doing the same for Top 10/25 wins for seeding purposes? If not, they should - that would at least put the onus on non-conference scheduling, which teams at least have some control over. Otherwise, the SEC and Pac-12 have a HUGE advantage.

Winning a major conference championship should matter. I would have seeded Minnesota in the Top 16, and Oklahoma in the Top 8.

Originally Posted by Sec_fan91There is a lot of validity in what she is saying, and we all know Minnesota was screwed. However, I do think it's fair to evaluate the teams that you're beating on your 28 game win streak or whatever.

This system needs a lot of help.

This is the real point, not so much OU's woes. Her point is more about the haphazard application of selection criteria to suit the committee's wants and needs. Hard to look at movement in the last week for Minnesota as compared to Ole Miss and not smell a rat. I applaud the suggestion to video tape and disclose the committee discussions and process.

Her point is dead right. Ole Miss jumping in the RPI is a rigged advantage to any SEC team.

The system is flawed but you only complain when it affects you. Hence most of the SEC are silent. Only Bama has a beef.. The Vol coaches are gleefully silent. __________________Tradition is just fine. Until something better comes along.

Being disrespected is often in the eyes of the 'injured' party. Maybe they didn't consider their records and success of the past, but they shouldn't have anyway. It's about this year. Oklahoma doesn't need a home advantage to win a Championship. The UW Huskies prevailed in 2009 by being on the road for Regionals and Supers. If Oklahoma loses before the WCWS, they can drive the few miles to the site and watch, anyway.

Originally Posted by SoonerFanHer point is dead right. Ole Miss jumping in the RPI is a rigged advantage to any SEC team. The system is flawed but you only complain when it affects you. Hence most of the SEC are silent. Only Bama has a beef.. The Vol coaches are gleefully silent.

These repeated spews about how the system is 'rigged' to the SEC's favor, how all they do is pile up numbers by playing against each other. Just a pile. And, no, I do not have any vested interest in any SEC team and find the ESPN circle-jerks to be maddening.

I compiled the records of the SEC teams Nos. 2-13 against the RPI 26 and worse. I'm keeping out Florida, just like I will with Oklahoma, Minnesota, JMU and ULL in their conferences.

RPI 26-295 opponents strain out most of the conference competition that everyone talks about pumping up the SEC's records

I really don't get all of the fussing about seedlings/pairings. For most squads the ultimate goal is to win a national championship. To do so, you're going to have to beat the best of the best in the tournament. What difference does it make if you face them in regionals, super regionals, or the WCWS. If you want to earn a championship, you have to win no matter who you play. Get over it and play the game.

Originally Posted by HoustonBear15I really don't get all of the fussing about seedlings/pairings. For most squads the ultimate goal is to win a national championship. To do so, you're going to have to beat the best of the best in the tournament. What difference does it make if you face them in regionals, super regionals, or the WCWS. If you want to earn a championship, you have to win no matter who you play. Get over it and play the game.

1) There's an advantage to playing at home. Most people think that you should have to earn that advantage;

2) A higher seed often means that you don't have to beat as many of the best, not only because you get to start against an easier team, but also because someone else might upset one of the better teams in your path.

Originally Posted by RahOKUFrom an article on OU Insider:I have a lot of questions as to why an Ole Miss that was 23 RPI wise going into this weekend, and they won the SEC Tournament, and they did a great job with it. However, in the RPI they went from 23 to 12, which was shocking.

I disagree. The opportunity to go to the top level tournaments and play a top opponent on your off week will be available for the coach that does the scheduling this summer/ fall for there college team. It's not like football that locks up out of conference opponents years in advance. The teams don't even know their conference off weeks for next year till later this summer.

Originally Posted by SoonerFanHer point is dead right. Ole Miss jumping in the RPI is a rigged advantage to any SEC team.

The system is flawed but you only complain when it affects you. Hence most of the SEC are silent. Only Bama has a beef.. The Vol coaches are gleefully silent.

Some of her points are certainly valid. But she is confused about one thing. Ole Miss did not jump from 23 to 12 in the RPI rankings. They jumped from 23 to 18. The bigger issue here which she failed to realize/mention, was Ole Miss getting moved up six spots from their RPI in seeding despite the warts in their resume that the committee did not factor ... including record in conference regular season/conference finish and losses against Too 25 ... while redundantly applying SOS (it is more than fully represented in RPI). Thus, both the RPI and the committee methodology is unfairly advantageous to the SEC.

Ole Miss strength of schedule helped their cause plus they won the SEC tournament which is no easy feat.Hope about this, If a team hosts, it cannot host again the following year regardless of record. Now that would make some interesting matchups and allow a whole new set of teams to host, at least every other year.

Right. Ole Miss was 8-13 against the SEC's top guns -- including 0-9 against Florida, Tennessee and Texas A&M -- yet had a terrific run at the SECT and got hopped six spots. It's the inequity of the application of the criteria. Conference championships count, sometimes. Playing your best ball at the end of the season counts, sometimes.

Gasso's no crybaby. She's saying the same kind of stuff that Michigan's Hutch said a couple days ago. OU scheduled tough early. Had to. In the Big XII there's very little opportunity to move up in RPI, even going 20-1 and not surrendering a run in the conference tournament. You can't go 8-13 in the Big XII and move up the rankings.

Her other point is is there was no credit for scheduling tough early and playing very competitively in 1-run losses to Arizona, Auburn, Washington and Tennessee. There should have been. Yeah, yeah, there's Cal Poly. Those losses hurt OU, yet Florida's loss to Maryland, a far, far worse team, didn't hurt the Gators a bit. (And I'd argue it shouldn't -- viewed as an aberration in an otherwise stellar season. But if you do that for Florida, you have to do it for others as well.) For OU there also was a run-ruling of UCLA. Florida State goes, what, 4-6-1 vs. the T25, including a late-season wipeout at Oregon and they're a top 5 seed. Yeah, I'd give them credit for scheduling the trip to Eugene, but if you credit the Seminoles for that (despite going 0-3 on the trip), you have to give credit for others' intentions as well.

Look, the committee's "work" suggests Oklahoma would've finished 5th in the SEC. That's ridiculous. From what Gasso is saying, if OU gets through the regional this weekend, the Sooners will arrive at Auburn with a special kind of focus for an SEC opponent.

Originally Posted by gavol19I disagree. The opportunity to go to the top level tournaments and play a top opponent on your off week will be available for the coach that does the scheduling this summer/ fall for there college team. It's not like football that locks up out of conference opponents years in advance. The teams don't even know their conference off weeks for next year till later this summer.

Northern schools don't have conference off weeks, because they can't start playing at home until later and so the conferences have to use all of them. (Minnesota never has home games scheduled before April 1, and even that isn't always sufficient; in 2013 April was so cold and rainy that two scheduled home series were moved to their opponents and they only played six home games.) And there are a lot of commitments that are made in advance. The obvious example is that, if two teams have a home-and-home agreement, that's obviously made well in advance of at least one of those years. That's not the only example, though.

Right. Ole Miss was 8-13 against the SEC's top guns -- including 0-9 against Florida, Tennessee and Texas A&M -- yet had a terrific run at the SECT and got hopped six spots. It's the inequity of the application of the criteria. Conference championships count, sometimes. Playing your best ball of the season counts, sometimes.

Gasso's no crybaby. She's saying the same kind of stuff that Michigan's Hutch said a couple days ago. OU scheduled tough early. Had to. In the Big XII there's very little opportunity to move up in RPI

Well.... yeah. And that is why she and Alameda, with 11 T25 games and 4+ wins, are hosting and Minnesota, with only four such games played, is not

The committee's guidelines for their selections say it from the top, 'strength of schedule' is being weighed over and above RPI's accounting for it. And, there is also that phrase about where games are played, another item not accounted for in RPI, and Ole Miss beat RPI 30, 1, 15 and 14 at a neutral site.

Again, here is that text: <<The ranking is based on the criteria used to select and seed the 64 teams for the Division I Softball Championship and include strength of schedule, Rating Percentage Index, head-to-head competition, results versus common opponents, significant wins and losses and locations of contests. Additionally, input is provided by the regional advisory committees for consideration by the Division I Softball Committee.>>

Only seven teams had more T25 wins this season. Ole Miss definitely deserves to be hosting.

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